No More Learning

At present, the Bisara is safe on an
ekka-pony's neck, inside the blue bead-necklace that keeps off the
Evil-eye. If the ekka-driver ever finds it, and wears it, or gives it to
his wife, I am sorry for him.

A very dirty hill-cooly woman, with goitre, owned it at Theog in 1884.
It came into Simla from the north before Churton's khitmatgar bought it,
and sold it, for three times its silver-value, to Churton, who collected
curiosities. The servant knew no more what he had bought than
the master; but a man looking over Churton's collection of
curiosities--Churton was an Assistant Commissioner by the way--saw and
held his tongue. He was an Englishman; but knew how to believe. Which
shows that he was different from most Englishmen. He knew that it was
dangerous to have any share in the little box when working or dormant;
for unsought Love is a terrible gift.

Pack--"Grubby" Pack, as we used to call him--was, in every way, a nasty
little man who must have crawled into the Army by mistake. He was three
inches taller than his sword, but not half so strong. And the sword was
a fifty-shilling, tailor-made one. Nobody liked him, and, I suppose, it
was his wizenedness and worthlessness that made him fall so hopelessly
in love with Miss Hollis, who was good and sweet, and five foot seven in
her tennis shoes. He was not content with falling in love quietly,
but brought all the strength of his miserable little nature into the
business. If he had not been so objectionable, one might have pitied
him. He vapored, and fretted, and fumed, and trotted up and down, and
tried to make himself pleasing in Miss Hollis's big, quiet, gray eyes,
and failed.
It was one of the cases that you sometimes meet, even in
this country where we marry by Code, of a really blind attachment all on
one side, without the faintest possibility of return. Miss Hollis
looked on Pack as some sort of vermin running about the road. He had
no prospects beyond Captain's pay, and no wits to help that out by one
anna. In a large-sized man, love like his would have been touching.

In a good man it would have been grand. He being what he was, it was
only a nuisance.

You will believe this much. What you will not believe, is what follows:
Churton, and The Man who Knew that the Bisara was, were lunching at the
Simla Club together. Churton was complaining of life in general. His
best mare had rolled out of stable down the hill and had broken her
back; his decisions were being reversed by the upper Courts, more
than an Assistant Commissioner of eight years' standing has a right to
expect; he knew liver and fever, and, for weeks past, had felt out of
sorts. Altogether, he was disgusted and disheartened.

Simla Club dining-room is built, as all the world knows, in two
sections, with an arch-arrangement dividing them. Come in, turn to your
own left, take the table under the window, and you cannot see any one
who has come in, turning to the right, and taken a table on the right
side of the arch. Curiously enough, every word that you say can be
heard, not only by the other diner, but by the servants beyond the
screen through which they bring dinner. This is worth knowing: an
echoing-room is a trap to be forewarned against.

Half in fun, and half hoping to be believed, The Man who Knew told
Churton the story of the Bisara of Pooree at rather greater length than
I have told it to you in this place; winding up with the suggestion that
Churton might as well throw the little box down the hill and see whether
all his troubles would go with it.